Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 Inside Out [Paperback]

Tony Redmond (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 2010 | Series: Inside Out

Dive into Exchange Server 2010 and SP1—and discover how to really put your messaging solutions to work! This well-organized and in-depth reference packs all the details you need to deploy and manage Exchange 2010, including hundreds of timesaving solutions, expert tips, and workarounds. Topics include preparing for the deployment of Exchange 2010; new features of Service Pack 1; using Remote PowerShell and the Exchange Management Shell; understanding how the new Role Based Access Control (RBAC) permissions model works and how to customize it to your requirements; the new high availability model for the Exchange Store and how to approach designs for Database Availability Groups; using compliance features such as archive mailboxes, retention policies, and multi-mailbox discovery searches; the new role of the Client Access Server as the MAPI endpoint for Microsoft Outlook clients; the redesign of Outlook Web App (OWA) and the introduction of the Exchange Control Panel; and many more topics to ease the roll-out of Microsoft’s latest messaging server.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Tony Redmond is a Microsoft MVP for Exchange Server, a contributing editor for Windows IT Pro magazine, and a former chief technology officer.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1248 pages
• Publisher: Microsoft Press; Pap/Psc edition (December 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735640610
• ISBN-13: 978-0735640610
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 1.8 x 9.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #47,111 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #20 in Books > Computers & Technology > Networking > Data in the Enterprise > Client-Server Systems
  • #38 in Books > Computers & Technology > Networking > Network Administration

More About the Author

Tony Redmond has been writing about electronic mail since 1992 and is acknowledged to be one of the foremost commentators on Microsoft collaboration technology, chiefly focusing on Microsoft Exchange Server. He retired from HP in March 2010 after spending ten years as a Vice President where he served in various roles such as Chief Technology Officer for HP Services. During his time at Digital Equipment Corporation, Compaq, and HP, Tony had a major influence over the relationship between the services divisions and many Microsoft engineering groups. Tony's books and other writing are based on the lessons learned through working with major customers to deploy technology both successfully and perhaps with less success. The aim is to understand what the technology can do and how best to deploy it to meet business goals.

His latest book is "Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 (including SP1): Inside Out" (ISBN 9780735640610), published by Microsoft Press in December 2010. Tony writes regularly about technology, travel, and rugby refereeing in his blog http://thoughtsofanidlemind.wordpress.com/

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A great deal of information May 30, 2011

By E. Purkerson

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I purchased the book to be a reference to questions I had concerning moving from an older version of Exchange to the current, including SP1. Just the weight and girth are formidable, but what's more impressive is that it's not filled with pictures or illustrations to make that girth (there are necessary illustrations). It's written in a straight-forward manner; info that is important gets an "Inside Out" box that stands out so you can't miss it.

The index is very good and has, so far, contained every word and acronym that I've needed to look up - which is important for me since I have so much to learn.

The author is obviously very accomplished and knowledgeable, and he is able to pour out that information in a very legible manner. This book is everything that I wanted and more.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars THIS is the Exchange 2010 Book You Want!! February 6, 2011

By KPinNH

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

One of the best technical manuals I've ever read, and definitely the best Exchange book ever written. A lot of books just walk you through the menus and commands, giving you little more than what you find in Help. This book explains what's happening behind the scenes, so you understand what's really important and what you need to consider when designing or troubleshooting your Exchange environment. Great detailed info and advice on every page! If you want to learn about Exchange 2010 this is the book you want!

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome! January 24, 2011

By Jaap Wesselius

Format:Paperback

This is for sure one of the best books on Exchange Server 2010. It contains lots and lots of detailed information on about every topic you can think of. It is in-depth, but at the same time well written and easy to read. I can certainly recommend this book to anyone interested in Exchange Server 2010.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstandingly helpful book February 3, 2012

By K Ball

Format:Paperback

Tony's been writing books about Exchange for at least 15 years - and this one is definitely the best he's done to date. That's not to say the others weren't good, but this book has built upon the previous works to become an example that's very hard to beat.

This isn't trying to be a book that explains every single step in every single action you might want to take when configuring Exchange 2010. There are others that take that approach if you need it.

Where this book really excels is in helping you understand both the capabilities of the complex beast that is Exchange 2010, and also comprehend the rationale behind why much of the functionality works the way it does. Tony's many years of experience of the evolving product give a depth and backdrop to the writing that is unmatched in most other authors, and it is this characteristic of his writing that for me brings real value to the book. He isn't just knowledgeable about Exchange 2010, he's wise as well - so if there are shortcomings in a particular feature area he'll share that with you, and recommend how you might work around them.

The layout is clean, neat, and readable, and there are just enough screenshots to inform without reducing the level of useful technical content. As an added bonus, my paper copy came with a code to access and download an electronic copy of the book, so searching for keywords or technical issues couldn't be easier.

If you're serious about gaining a thorough understanding of Exchange 2010, then this book would be number one on my list of recommendations.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Primary Source for Exchange 2010 Info July 12, 2011

By Trey

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is the book I've been looking for, regarding Exchange 2010. I was looking forward to other Exchange 2010 books published by other Presses, and when I finally was able to buy them, I was let down - as the books came up short on material. The MS Press Self-Paced Training Kit - Exam 70-662, was decent (for a change) and the "Exchange Server 2010 Administration: Real World Skills for MCITP" was not bad, but this Exchange 2010 Inside Out is by far the definitive material.
I hope I don't offend anyone by writing this, but this book is to Exchange 2010, what the "MS Exchange 2003 Advanced Administration" by McBee was to Exchange 2003.

If you're weighing your options, get this book first.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Tony maintain his promise one more time December 9, 2010

By Borislav Tatchev

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book is awesome! It's a must have tool and reference guide for every IT professional that is involved in planing, designing and deployment and migration of the Exchange Architecture.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Lots of (unorganized) information for people who already know the product October 15, 2012

By Tom Y

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Mr. Redmond is an excellent authority on Microsoft Exchange, and the depth of his knowledge is apparent in this book. However, I did not find the book very well written or easy to read. On the cover there is a bullet that says, "Supremely organized, packed with expert advice." The second part of that is true.

My own background is someone who has worked extensively with Exchange from version 5.5 to 2003, but I skipped 2007 and wanted to get up to speed on 2010. If that describes you as well, this definitely is not the book for you; suggestions at the end of this review. If you are familiar with Exchange 2010 already and simply want to learn more, and don't care how the information is presented or even particularly what you're going to learn about, you might enjoy this book. Many other reviewers clearly have.

Mr. Redmond, by his own acknowledgment early in the book, took a "shotgun" approach to writing this text. He didn't have a particular strategy for what to write about and in what order. He sort of jumped in and did a brain dump, and wrote chapter headings as they sort of made sense. But to be sure, you'll find things in strange places, and if you overlooked his comments on his writing strategy you will be scratching your head wondering why various tidbits are where they are.

In that the book is a brain dump, it does capture a tremendous amount of information. But if you're trying to learn about Exchange 2010 without a background in it, the order of things makes no sense. Chapter 3, for instance, is all about Exchange Management Shell, the PowerShell command line method of administering Exchange. And it goes into a fair amount of depth. But at this point in the book we have not discussed Exchange architecture at all.... We don't know what a Client Access Server or a Hub Transport Server is. We haven't looked at how Exchange is administered from the GUI. Mr. Redmond even starts talking about how PowerShell has advantages over the Exchange Control Panel in this chapter, when he's never mentioned it before so we have no idea what the ECP is or what you can do with it. So we're learning how to manage Exchange from a CLI when we don't even know how to architect a basic Exchange installation yet. Makes no sense and makes it impossible to take in the information unless you already have a good background in it.

Once I got a couple hundred pages into the book, I realized this was not the book I needed to be reading, and so in full disclosure I didn't finish this 1000+ page tome on Exchange. So I can't say definitively that all the information I'd need to learn about how to install and manage Exchange 2010, coming from an E2K3 background, isn't in there. But from the table of contents it is not at all apparent that there is any substantial discussion of Exchange installation, design and implementation. There is a lot of discussion of management tasks.

Mr. Redmond also spends a great deal of time going over RBAC, role-based access control, and its features in Exchange 2010. There are chapters on legal compliance and retention, and other features primarily of interest to larger organizations. From his emphasis on these topics and his overall style, I think the target audience for this book is more administrators (not designers/engineers) in very large (10000+ seats) organizations, where roles are highly defined and job functions of limited scope. People who work at smaller organizations probably won't be very interested in a lot of this discussion. Which is not to say these topics are not relevant, but rather that there is not enough discussion of the more fundamental topics.

I didn't expect a book called "Exchange Server 2010 Inside Out" to be understandable by someone without a good Microsoft background, including Exchange background. But I did not expect that in order to get much out of it, you already should be quite familiar with the product.

Since Mr. Redmond reads these reviews, I'd like to propose the possibility that he has been working with Exchange for so long, and in such large environments, that he has become distanced from what "average" administrators need to know, and for his book on Exchange 2013, it might be helpful for him to take a step back and write a book that goes over the architecture, implementation, best practices, backup and restore, etc. of Exchange that can be understood by people coming from backgrounds of various versions of Exchange, or no background, but with a good technical mind. We need people who know the product very well, and have used it for a very long time, to write books like that, given how spread out the documentation is these days.

So in summary, there is a tremendous amount of knowledge given in this book, and it may be a good read for someone who already knows a fair amount of Exchange 2010 and just wants to pick up some more. But if you are trying to learn Exchange 2010 for the first time, don't confuse this book as "Exchange 2010: The Missing Manual." It is not the missing manual. If you want to learn Exchange 2010 well, read first the Exchange 2010 Best Practices Guide, which covers design and implementation on a very good and practical level, and then read the Exchange 2010 Administrator's Pocket Consultant for the very down to earth how-to. Once you've got all that down, perhaps this would be a good read. Read more ›